‘Untapped potential’: NDP touts international health-care workers licensing plan

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/09/2023 (764 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba NDP continued its run of health-related campaign promises Friday, vowing to speed up and support credentials recognition for internationally educated health-care professionals.

“Manitoba has so much untapped potential,” NDP Leader Wab Kinew said across the street from Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg.

“We have thousands of health-care professionals who’ve come here from around the world,” but many struggle with bureaucratic barriers, red tape, long waits and hefty processing fees, he said.

“We have a five-point plan that we’re announcing today to tap into these hundreds of health-care workers who are already in Manitoba, as we speak, so they can practise to their full set of skills and take care of you, the patients.”

The NDP promised to establish a newcomer workplace navigator office within government to support them through the credentialing and registration process (at a cost of about $1 million).

Kinew said if his party forms government after the Oct. 3 vote, it will waive the permanent residence requirement for language courses and offer financial aid to help families get by while settling in the province and pursuing their credentials (at a cost of $1 million a year).

Philippines native Raquel Ann Magat, a registered nurse who works for the Rock Lake Health District (Pilot Mound), said Manitoba’s system was such a challenge she ended up going to another province to get licensed.

“The process was long, expensive and the wait time was lengthy, so I did my licensing through Ontario instead,” she said Friday at the NDP event.

There, Magat said, she benefited from a “navigator” service similar to what the Manitoba NDP is promising.

“Honestly, it is tough on new immigrants,” said Magat, who arrived in Winnipeg in 2016. “You are focusing on living here and taking care of your family and your needs every day, trying to survive. Processing is very expensive. Getting licensed takes a long time.

“We want to work in our professions, to serve Manitobans, but, under this (Tory) government, a lot of internationally educated nurses are going through tough times trying to work in their profession.”

The NDP promised Friday to address other issues facing health-care professionals trained abroad, including creating enough opportunities for clinical practice hours in Manitoba and getting regulators, post-secondary schools and employers to collaborate on registering more health professionals.

In a statement Friday, the Tories said the NDP are announcing plans the PC government has underway.

“We invested $400 million for the recruitment, training and retaining of health-care professionals, and our PC government’s successful effort in the Philippines recruited nearly 350 health-care workers,” said party spokesman Shannon Martin. (In August, the Free Press reported just a handful of the 311 who were successfully recruited had arrived.)

“Our PC government ordered the College of Registered Nurses (of Manitoba) to eliminate the test for returning out-of-province applicants in 2022.”

The PC statement did not mention system “navigators” had been hired last year to help unlicensed, retired and international nurses through the registration process.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Dan Lett | Not for Attribution

Tuesdays

A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world.

Sign up for Dan Lett | Not for Attribution

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

The PCs haven’t done enough, Kinew said.

“What we’re talking about here today isn’t just about recruiting more folks to come to Manitoba,” the candidate for Fort Rouge said. “We’re talking about people who are already here… who’ve already chosen to call Manitoba their home but maybe because they’re working on their permanent residency paper work to get approved, they can’t do the language test.

“Let’s remove that barrier. Or maybe it’s a financial barrier that’s standing in the way of someone moving from a health-care aide position to a nursing position,” Kinew said.

“We’ve got to get in the game as Manitoba, because not only are we missing out on potential new recruits, we’re seeing some of our existing health-care workforce get poached and they’re going to Ontario, to Alberta and B.C.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.